memoir

I poured the oats into the wooden bowl and sprinkled on some cinnamon. Adding pecan halves next, I absentmindedly began breaking them in half again, noting how much crispier they were than the ones I had used in the granola the week before. Those were rubbery, softer. I wasn’t sure if I should have used … Continue reading It Always Goes Back to the Botulism

I understand how she feels, the need for the right ingredients. For me it was often about health, the thought that one thing could make a difference. Like the article that linked rice with arsenic from soil in Texas and Louisiana. I’d be standing in the rice aisle, squinting without my glasses, looking for the source of where the rice was grown. Sometimes it was listed. If it was the arsenic soil. I’d scrap my plan for dinner. Stuck in aisle three.

(excerpt from the winter of rice and dal) I can pinpoint the moment when my dread of cooking abated, when I stopped saying the sentence “When my kids grow up and leave I am never cooking dinner again.” The meal that holds all the pressure-- from research that declares it as the most important family time … Continue reading pudding bridge

I wondered if I had miscalculated as I stood in June’s kitchen after dropping by unannounced at 7:15 am. She was still in her pajamas, which were actually her husband’s old boxer shorts. Her house was on my way home from taking my youngest to school. I knew she’d be awake because her husband … Continue reading Stopping by a Kitchen on a Winter’s Morning